Blood Harvest: Two Vampire Novels (23 page)

No. She’s going to be okay
.

The thinnest amount of light came through the
door ahead, just enough to tell her that she was going in the right
direction. There might even be enough light for her to see Zoey
now, but she didn’t allow herself to look down at the bundle in her
arms. As much as she wanted to deny it, she already had an idea
what she would see.

She had expected to see chaos when she opened
the door, but the room was mostly empty. All the cages had been
opened and most were empty, although Peg could hear the hint of
voices from the exit. Even Pig’s cage near the end was empty,
although she didn’t think it would have been easy for him to
escape. One or two stragglers stayed in their cages, still huddled
away from the opening as though they expected something to come in
after them at any moment. Maybe Peg would be in a state to deal
with or help them later, but right now it was time to stop putting
off the inevitable. She finally looked down at Zoey.

No one other than Peg would have been able to
recognize her anymore. It was as though her body had been shaped in
clay and some giant, malicious child had grabbed her in random
places and squeezed. Which, Peg realized, wasn’t too far from the
truth. Peg gently got to her knees and lowered Zoey to the ground,
trying to make sense of what parts of her were supposed to be
where.

Whatever trick the thing did to its victims
to shape them into its body, it was obvious that it had already
been in the process when Peg had freed Zoey. She had extra flaps of
skin hanging from all over her body that didn’t quite match her
skin tone. Her right shoulder was a good half a foot lower than her
left. Her face was mostly intact, although her ear had migrated to
her cheek, her hair getting pulled along with it until it all stuck
out along the side of her head. Her hips were twisted at a nearly
ninety degree angle. Her delicate butterfly wing tattoos, formerly
on her back, were now crowding in where he right breast should have
been, which itself was disturbingly close to her belly button. Her
entire left foot was missing, vanishing just below the calf.

And yet, through a bodily trauma that should
have killed even the hardiest person, Zoey still breathed.

Peg’s first reaction was to say that Zoey
needed to hang on, that there was some way they could fix this, but
she held her tongue. To attempt to help Zoey after this would only
be torture for her.

Zoey’s lips moved but no sound came out. Peg
leaned closer, trying to hear, but instead leaned forward on her
sister, cradling the mangled body and rocking as the tears started
to come.

She’d failed. Again. There were no possible
excuses this time. She couldn’t try to tell herself that she had no
way of knowing. She should have been able to stop it this time.
Everything her mother had ever said about her was right. She should
be the one dying, not the beautiful, spunky, bratty little angel
that she had grown up with.

Her sobs stopped suddenly. A calm came over
her, a great peace, although Peg didn’t understand at first how
such a thing could have formed so quickly in her mind. Then she
realized these were not her emotions at all. She sat back up and
looked back down into the ruin that now passed for her sister’s
face. Despite the obvious and intense pain, there was something on
Zoey’s face that could almost be a smile.

All of Zoey’s emotions washed over Peg,
cleaning away the guilt and anguish. Zoey didn’t blame her. She
wasn’t even angry at Peg, never had been in the slightest. What she
felt instead was gratitude. And love. A love so deep it felt to Peg
like it could crush her heart in her chest.

Because Zoey had always known that day that
her big sister would save her. There had never been any doubt. And
in Zoey’s mind, she
had
been saved. She wasn’t going to be
part of the never-torment currently slinking away deeper beneath
the earth. She could finally be at peace. And she had Peg to thank
for it.

Peg sat there for several minutes quietly
stroking her sister’s remaining good cheek. When she was ready she
stood up and searched the room for a good size rock, something she
could use to make it as quick and painless as possible without
resorting to the trick she’d used on the minions.

But by the time Peg got back to Zoey she had
stopped breathing. The extra flaps of skin had already broken away
and were turning into unrecognizable muck, with the rest of Zoey’s
body following quickly after.

Peg sat at her side and held her hand until
it too disintegrated. And sense of peace or not, Peg started to cry
again.

V trudged up the bleachers to join Peg in her
spot away from all the other parents. She had a pair of hotdogs in
her hand that she had picked up at the gas station so they would
have something to snack on as the game started. Peg would be able
to choke one down just to keep up appearances, but she wouldn’t
really get any nourishment from it. Her actual meal would have to
wait until later when she could break out the bottle she had gotten
from the meat market without anyone seeing.

“Here you go,” V said, handing her a dog in a
bun. “Got it especially for you.”

Peg started to reach for it, then stopped
when the stench assaulted her nostrils. It was actually an Italian
sausage. And it was full of garlic.

“Hardy fucking har,” Peg said.

“Hey, don’t look at me. What makes it so
funny every time is that you still almost fall for it.”

“Bitch,” Peg said.

“Whore,” V said with a smile, then held out
the other hot dog instead. “There’s your real one.”

“Where’d Zoey go?” Peg asked as she brought
the hot dog to her nose and took a whiff just to be sure.

“Made a bee line for her usual place,” V
said.

In her typical over-protective manner Peg
reached out to make sure she had a solid feel for Zoey’s emotions.
She was happy. That was more than enough to satisfy her.

“Did I miss anything?” V asked, her mouth
full of sausage and relish.

“Not really,” Peg said. “Brendan hasn’t gone
up yet.”

For anyone else it would have been the
perfect day for a Little League game. The sun was high in a
cloudless sky with just a hint of a breeze to keep it from getting
too warm. All the other parents were in shorts and tank-tops. Peg,
on the other hand, was dressed in jeans and long sleeves, a fashion
statement that got her more than a few strange looks from parents
that already thought she was a little odd. She also wore a large
floppy hat and sunglasses, and every exposed portion of her skin
was thickly lathered with the strongest sunblock she could find.
Despite this she would likely be in a great deal of pain by the
time she got back home, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to let a
little discomfort keep her from Brendan’s first game of the
season.

After a couple other ten-year olds had their
turn at bat Brendan finally came up. Peg and V immediately stood up
and cheered, prompting a red-faced glance from Brendan before he
turned to concentrate on the pitcher. Despite his embarrassment Peg
could feel how happy he was to have her here. He knew how hard the
sunlight was on her. Usually V or her husband Norm were the ones
who took him to his daytime events. Although she never sensed his
emotions with quite the same clarity as Zoey’s, Peg knew how much
this meant to him.

The years of raising him following Tony’s
death had been full of unique challenges, the biggest being the
question of how much to tell him about his mother’s new nature and
at what times. He was a smart boy, though. He’d eventually figured
it out himself. Peg wished there was someone professional he could
talk to about his family’s unique nature, but the only other person
Peg allowed him to share with was V. She had been instrumental in
keeping Peg sane as she tried to navigate the perils of single
motherhood.

The first peril, of course, had been trying
to explain Tony’s murder. The fact that Peg had disappeared for a
day hadn’t helped any. Only V providing her a fake alibi had kept
her out of a courtroom. Tony’s murder was still officially listed
as unsolved, although certain horrible gossips in the town still
like to spread the rumors that she had murdered her husband for
some unknown reason. Peg could deal with those kind of rumors. They
were nothing compared to the real terrors she’d faced.

There were also the rumors that Peg’s
continued good looks, looks that would have been more appropriate
in a woman about ten years younger, were the result of plastic
surgery paid for with Tony’s life insurance. Those, at least, Peg
found hilarious. She wondered what all the other soccer moms would
say if they knew the only work ever done on her face was the
constant filing of her teeth to keep them from growing out to their
natural length. Quite a few of them would be a lot more careful
about what gossip reached Peg’s ears, she bet.

Brendan hit the ball on the second swing,
sending it bouncing between second and third base, earning him a
place on first and sending a runner home. Peg and V cheered, but
before Peg could sit down she was struck with a strong sense of
unease. She sent out her own concern, trying her best to make it
feel like a question, and the response she got was a sensation of
being in bed, a warm and safe place, but with a sense of dread that
she might not be alone. It was fear, but a very specific fear. Fear
of the boogeyman.

“Keep an eye on Brendan, would you?” Peg
asked. Something on her face must have worried V.

“Is everything okay?” she asked.

“I think so. Probably nothing I can’t
handle,” Peg said.

Peg swiftly but calmly walked down the
bleachers and went into the direction of the park’s nearby
playground. She found Zoey in her favorite hangout, literally. She
was dangling upside down from the monkey bars. That had been part
of her regular play for the last several months, her way of
pretending she was a bat. At her size the act looked far more
dangerous for her than it actually was. To most people she only
looked four or five. They were surprised when they realized she was
actually several years older.

As Zoey saw her approach she let go of her
perch and tumbled to the ground. Any other mother would have
screamed and run in a futile attempt to catch her child. Peg,
however, knew full well that Zoey was in no danger. The little girl
spun in mid-air, a motion that was so fast normal eyes could barely
see it, and Zoey landed on the ground in a perfect three-point
landing. That concerned Peg, not because it was dangerous but
because it was showing off. She’d warned Zoey over and over again
not to do anything like that where other people might be able to
see. The last thing Peg needed was even more unanswerable questions
about their peculiar little family.

Zoey ran up to Peg and hugged her leg, her
unsettled emotions again registering high in Peg’s mind. Peg took a
knee so she could look her daughter in the eye. She had Peg’s eyes,
but her father’s nose. The hair, however, that was all from the
aunt that had died nine months before she was born. Sometimes Peg
looked at Zoey and her heart ached for the people she’d lost. But
most times Peg just looked at her little girl and her pride
swelled.

Zoey had been a surprise in oh so many ways.
Peg hadn’t even thought that a vampire like herself, even a new
one, could get pregnant. But apparently she had, and it had been
only hours after her sister had unwittingly turned her. She’d had a
lot of anxiety that her blood, freely mixing with that of her
unborn daughter, would also change the baby. There’d been a lot of
questions about what a vampire baby would even be like. Would it
never age? Would it be a baby forever? Would she have to feed it
blood? The answer to all those questions, in the end, had been “not
quite.” While her mind matured at a normal rate her body aged
slower. She’d fed just fine at Peg’s breast, which Peg realized
probably wasn’t the kind of milk that she would want to give to any
other baby anyway. Zoey didn’t have to file her teeth like her
mother, but Peg had no idea if it would stay that way once she
finally lost her baby teeth. Her daughter, as far as Peg knew, was
something new and unexplored.

There had never once been a question of what
she would be named, though.

“What is it, honey?”

“Mommy, I think I saw one.”

That was exactly what Peg had been afraid of.
It was possible Zoey was mistaken, but Peg had taken a lot of time
intentionally instilling a fear in her daughter that she hadn’t in
Brendan. She’d told her stories, light enough on details that Zoey
didn’t wake screaming in the night like her mother (although for
Peg it was usually more like waking screaming in the day) but with
enough information that Zoey would be able to give a warning if she
ever saw anything suspicious.

Peg had returned to the abandoned house on
Lake Winnebago a week after her escape, this time with V at her
side along with every weapon they could possibly find on short
notice and many full gas cans. She’d felt it was her duty to return
and burn, destroy, or kill anything that was still left at the
bottom of the sink hole, although she hadn’t really believed she
would be able to force herself any further than the ramshackle
door.

But they hadn’t even gotten that far. In the
intervening week the rest of the house had collapsed in on itself.
The sinkhole was still there under the rubble, but it was
significantly shallower. The walls had collapsed in on themselves.
The rickety stairwell was gone, likely fallen first and then buried
under tons of limestone. V had said the place gave her the chills,
like something still didn’t want them to be there, but other than
those things there was no trace of anything out of the
ordinary.